


Too Lazy to Stop Being Lazy

by swimmingwolf59



Series: Supports intsys should've given me but didn't so I wrote them myself [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, subtle background marihilda, support conversations style ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22750573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingwolf59/pseuds/swimmingwolf59
Summary: Linhardt tricks Hilda into doing the work she was trying to get out of. Hilda retaliates.
Relationships: Hilda Valentine Goneril & Linhardt von Hevring
Series: Supports intsys should've given me but didn't so I wrote them myself [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635778
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Too Lazy to Stop Being Lazy

**Author's Note:**

> I was kinda disappointed that the ashen wolves dlc didn't give us any extra dialogue between the surface kids, so I decided to write my own. These two are perfect for each other and I will not take criticism 
> 
> I wrote this in like a day so sorry if there are any mistakes lol

**_C-Support_ **

Annoyingly, Hilda was stuck on stable duty today.

Even more annoyingly, Claude had also been assigned to stable duty today, but he had sent a note just a few minutes ago that said he was heading down into the Abyss for important house-leader-duties with Yuri, an excuse that seemed flimsy at best and downright rude at worst. The note had even had a winky face on it.

A _winky_ face.

Needless to say, Hilda was furious at being blown off by _Claude_ of all people, who _knew_ how much she hated doing work like this. Perhaps Claude had also known that she would’ve done anything she possibly could to make sure he got stuck on stable duty alone, but dammit, it was _her_ job to trick people into doing her work for her, not his. 

She wandered around the horse stable for a bit, hoping to run into _someone_ to shove the work off to, but she saw no one, as if everyone in the Monastery had gone down into the Abyss for “important house-leader-duties.”

Frustrated, she headed back into the stable. The place was a mess – whoever had been assigned to clean it last week had obviously not been meticulous about it, because there were _layers_ of manure and the smell was horrendous. Marianne’s favorite horse, Dorte, was the only horse not standing in its own filth, and Hilda groaned.

This was the absolute _worst_.

Snapping on gloves, Hilda stared at the absolute mess in front of her. Goddess, she didn’t even know where to _start_.

Just then, however, she heard footsteps outside.

_Yes!_

She ran to the entrance, only to see Linhardt walking by, staring blankly ahead as if he wasn’t fully present. Hilda didn’t know him very well, but she jumped on the opportunity to get out of doing the work. “Linhardt! Thank the goddess you’re here, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Linhardt looked surprised at being addressed. “Oh, hi Hilda. I suppose my research can wait for a moment.”

Hilda wasn’t sure what “research” he was talking about, as he obviously hadn’t been doing anything, but she let it slide. “You’ll never believe what happened, Linhardt! Claude and I were put on stable duty together, but Claude blew me off to go hang out in the Abyss with Yuri! I mean, who _does_ that?! And look at how much of a mess this place is in!”

Linhardt peered into the stable. Hilda took note of how he very purposefully didn’t take a single step inside. “That _is_ filthy. I’m sorry for you, Hilda.”

“I _guess_ it’s fine,” Hilda groaned, amping up the act as she twisted her knee back and forth. She knew she almost had him. “But I spend soooo much time getting ready in the morning, don’t you think it’s unfair that I have to sully all of my efforts doing this dirty work?”

“You may be right.” Linhardt hummed. “But you know what I heard? In some countries, horse manure is used as an ingredient in perfumes.”

“… _Really?_ ” Hilda could hardly believe it. Why would anyone want to smell like _this_? And Holst had _never_ told her anything like that. She was sure he would’ve, since he knew she delighted in learning about fashion in other countries.

“Yes, apparently it’s quite an aphrodisiac.” 

“Hm, I suppose a lot of men _do_ like getting as dirty as possible,” Hilda mumbled, considering. Was it all along a subconscious attempt to make themselves more attractive? It had always repelled Hilda, but maybe she was different than most other people.

Linhardt nodded. “Exactly. So maybe instead of looking at it as ruining your outfit, you could think of it as building yourself up for the person you’re interested in.”

Unconsciously, the thought of Marianne popped into her head. Now that Hilda thought about it, Marianne _loved_ the horses – she spent all of her free time in the stables, especially talking to that horse named Dorte. Maybe if Hilda spent all day cleaning horse manure, she would smell especially alluring to Marianne – was that what Linhardt was getting at?

“Wow, Linhardt, I never thought of it that way! Maybe this task isn’t so bad!” Hilda gushed, pumping her fists. “I guess it’s all about perspective, huh?”

Linhardt smiled. “Exactly.”

“Well thanks! I’m going to get started right away!”

“You’re welcome, Hilda,” Linhardt said, and drifted away.

Rolling up her sleeves, Hilda started scraping all of the manure off the floor with fervor. She was going to get this place _spotless_ , which would make Marianne happy, and in doing so she would also be spending as much time around the horse manure as possible, which would hopefully make it seep into her pores and make her smell more attractive. Right, so she was going to rake up the poop and excess food, scrub the floor, wash it down, brush the horses, and then—

Hilda stopped in her tracks.

Wait a moment – how did _she_ end up doing all this?! The whole point of calling Linhardt over was to make _him_ do the job for her! She bet horse manure didn’t even make someone smell attractive – he had just said that to get out of doing the work himself!!

Fuming, she threw down her rake. She would get him for this.

**_B-Support_ **

“I’m not falling for it next time, Linhardt,” Hilda growled, storming into the library.

Linhardt looked up disinterestedly from his book. “Falling for what?”

She slammed a giant book onto the table next to him. “I’ve searched in every foreign fashion book I can find, and there’s no perfume _anywhere_ that uses horse manure as an ingredient!”

Well, there was no use in pretending anymore. “Oh. I guess I heard wrong.”

“Sure, of _course_ you did,” Hilda fumed, eyeing him. “I didn’t take you for a liar – it makes me wonder what else you’ve been pretending to know things about.”

“I don’t make it a point of lying,” Linhardt said. “It’s just that I would do just about anything to get out of cleaning the horse stable.”

“…Well, I can understand that, at least,” she huffed.

“Did you clean the whole stable, then?”

“No, I got Ashe to do it – I think that kid would happily take _any_ duty out of your hands.”

“Hm, I’ll have to remember that,” Linhardt mused. Ashe _did_ seem like the here-please-let-me-help type. “But see, there really is no need to be mad at me – it’s not like you ended up cleaning it.”

“But I _almost_ did, that’s the problem.” She propped herself against the table. “But you know, I’m not really that mad. After all, it’s something I would’ve done, too.”

“Oh? Then you just came to talk about horse manure?”

“No, I wanted to tell you something that I heard. You’re doing some kind of research about Crests, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “Yes, I hope to one day be as successful in Crestology as Professor Hanneman.”

“Then I’ll help you by telling you and not him!” She leaned in close, even though there was no one else in the library, and whispered, “I was talking to Raphael yesterday, and…he told me he thinks he developed a _Crest_.”

Linhardt sat up a bit straighter. “ _Really?_ That would be quite unusual – since commoners don’t descend from the royal bloodline, it’s essentially impossible for them to develop a Crest. Do you know when he got it? What does it do?”

“Sorry, that’s all I know,” she said, leaning back and twirling one of her long ponytails around her finger. “He seemed reluctant to talk about it. He’s always going on and on about how he believes the size of your muscles overpowers a Crest ability any day, so I think he was embarrassed that he ended up developing one.”

“Do you think he would talk to me?” Linhardt asked. “I can be quite persuasive.”

“I don’t know, he seemed strangely closed off about it.” Hilda put her finger to her chin, thinking. “He _loves_ to eat, though – maybe if you cleaned the kitchen or helped cook dinner or something, he would feel like he owed you and tell you?”

That sounded reasonable. While Linhardt usually detested doing work like this, he would do anything for his research. “Thanks for the tip, Hilda – you’re really helping my research. Maybe I’ll credit you when I publish my findings.”

She beamed. “You’re welcome! And aw, thanks! I bet my brother would be really proud to see my name on a scientific paper!”

“It would only benefit you,” Linhardt agreed, and stood up. “I’ll see you around then, Hilda.”

“Bye, Linhardt!” she said cheerfully, and hefted the giant book easily back into her arms.

Linhardt tucked his own book under his arm and left the library, walking as quickly as he could to the kitchen.

For how smart Linhardt was, it took him a long time to realize Hilda had fooled him. It was only after he had cleaned the entire kitchen _and_ helped cook dinner that he talked to Raphael, who had no idea what he was talking about. _I wouldn’t use the Crest even if I had one,_ he’d said, which told Linhardt that he probably wasn’t feigning ignorance because he didn’t even seem to understand how Crests _worked_. If he didn’t have a Crest, then why would…?

That was when Linhardt felt dread creeping up on him. He hurried to the billboard outside of the classrooms to look at the list of tasks everyone was assigned to today. Just as he had suspected, Hilda’s name was listed underneath kitchen duty. He had been completely duped.

Linhardt hummed, thoughtful.

Oh, she was good.

**_A-Support_ **

It became almost a competition, after that.

At least once a month, when one of them was assigned a particularly disagreeable task, they would seek each other out and attempt to trick one another into doing the work for them. Since it was starting to be expected, it didn’t often work, but every once in a while, Linhardt had the best poker face or Hilda was especially cunning. The competition stalled once the war started of course, but when they reunited five years later, Hilda had essentially greeted him by tricking him into cleaning the rubble away from her assigned area of the Monastery. Linhardt had thought that maybe she would be less lazy as an adult, and in some ways she was, but not in this, apparently. They were more alike than Linhardt had originally realized. Linhardt retaliated by getting her to pull out weeds around the Monastery for him, and the feud continued.

It was only after a month or two passed of this that Linhardt realized that it was taking much more effort coming up with ways for Hilda to do his work for him than it would take if he just did the work himself. He realized abruptly that this little competition of theirs needed to end.

He had a better idea, anyway.

“Hilda, do you have a moment?” Linhardt asked, walking up to her. It had taken him forever to find her – he had looked on every floor of the Monastery, including Abyss, before finally finding her on the _third_ floor of all places, staring at the pond. He had a feeling she had hidden up here specifically so that he would have to work to find her.

“Linhardt, fancy running into you here!” she said, her voice teasing. “If you’re going to say something about what interesting things I could find if I cleaned the whole library, don’t bother – I saw that you’re assigned to that task today.”

“I wasn’t, actually, though it’s something related,” Linhardt said.

She was instantly suspicious. Linhardt suddenly felt exhausted at the idea that it might take even _more_ work to convince her to stop fighting him.

“Over the years, I’ve come to realize that our talents could be put to much better use than trying to outsmart each other.”

“Oh?” Hilda said, hands on her hips and an eyebrow raised.

“Yes – I mean, certainly you must agree that trying to fool me into doing your work for you is often more work than if you’d just done it yourself, right?”

She thought about this for a moment. “I suppose that’s true. It’s also a waste of effort when you think about how many of our other classmates are a lot more gullible.”

He smiled. “Exactly! So I was thinking, why spend all this effort trying to get each other to do the work, when neither of us really want to? Our efforts would be much better directed towards someone else. With the both of us, there’s no way anyone could resist our persuasion.”

Hilda actually grinned. “I like the way you think, Linhardt! I’m actually supposed to be on Sky Watch right now.”

Linhardt smirked. “Ah, then let’s get started.”

They made their way down to where the pegasi and wyverns were kept, keeping an eye out for any of their classmates. At first, they only ran into their Professor, who gave them their classic blank-but-slightly-suspicious stare, and Linhardt worried that they somehow wouldn’t find anyone and the fight would have to continue.

“Don’t worry, Linhardt,” Hilda said when Linhardt voiced part of this concern out loud. “We’ll get out of this work no matter what it takes!”

“That sounds like even more work!” Linhardt groaned, but just then they heard a familiar laugh up ahead.

Grinning wickedly at each other, they both rounded the corner, where a poor, innocent student was walking by on his way to class. Hilda and Linhardt, barely containing their laughter, called out in unison:

“Oh, Lorenz?”

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kaoru_of_hakone) !


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